Hi all

I received a call from Southern Counties Radio at about 8.30 this
morning to comment on the number of starfish on Brighton beach.
Sleepily, before my first cup of coffee and getting our daughter
ready for school they squeezed in my comments 2 minutes later in the
news.

Not really enough time to explain my thougts, (they allocated me
about 2 minutes) they wanted a comment following what I gather
had been a large number of listeners phoning in about the starfish
on Brighton Beach.

As we have friends staying with us I had not seen the piece in the
Argus newspaper(including Environment Agencies comments that they
felt the deaths were due to something other than the storm)
or the deaths along the Kent coast.

My comments were that I felt it was due to the storm, although this
was based on what I saw at Hove Beach (Hove/Brighton border,2 days
ago). I have seen such large numbers of starfish washed ashore after
severe storms many times at Brighton in the last 25 years.
Many years ago I worked at the aquarium in Brighton as Education
Officer 1978 - 1991 and I often went down after winter storms.
Unfortunately I no longer have these records so its all anecdotal.
Brighton has always been a good beach for strandline debris,
possibly due to the wave action and currents on that piece of
coast.I live a few miles from Brighton and so still visit this
stretch of coastline quite regularly (including work on a 2 year
funded project about the Brighton coast including the Strandline).

In amongst the strandline debris and dead starfish were the remains
of other dead marine creatures such as common whelks, oyster,
fish egg clump (possibly lumpsucker) at least one dead dogfish
embryo in a capsule (and about 3 others that looked like they may
have had developing embryo remains), whelk eggs which had unhatched
eggs, the occasional fish remains. There were also animals that
appeared to be still alive such as slipper limpet (piles) sea
squirts and the odd sea anemone. All of these I would expect to see
washed up after a storm on this coastline, based on previous
occurances.

I was surprised by the lack of scavengers taking advantage of this
bounty. I suspect the herring gulls now prefer to dine on the
relatively fine cuisine thrown out by the local restraunts.

Anyone else have any accounts, anecdotal or otherwise, of such
occurances in Sussex.

Steve Savage
Sea Watch Foundation Co-ordinator
and marine educator.